Not My Father's Son
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Michandrea One Shot. Most of who we are is made up of what we know, what we are told, and what we remember all blended together. He knew that he was not his father's son.


**AN: This is kind of an odd story. I don't really know why I wanted to write it, but it was really bugging me to be written. I was watching some YouTube videos and the question was raised to Laurie Holden (before we knew what would happen in the show) about what would Andrea do if the story took the turn that Andrea would end up pregnant with the Governor's child.**

**Her response was that Andrea, of course, would love the child and that, essentially, the child should not be held responsible for who its father was.**

**This is something of a twist, I guess off of that.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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In my mind things blur. Maybe they blur in everyone's mind, but I've only ever had the one and can't compare my experiences with those of a single other soul. I believe what my mind tells me is true, but I've learned that just because I believe it, doesn't make it truth.

And somewhere in my mind it feels like there are large chests like the old Oak one that rests at the foot of my parents' bed in our home. The Oak chest holds things I've seen before, touched, and heard stories about that I never remembered experiencing. The chests in my mind, though, hold things that can't be touched. And, maybe, they can't be trusted.

I believe that one chest holds my memories. One holds the memories that I know to be true. It holds the recollections of the things that happened to me within the realm of things I haven't forgotten, and hopefully never will. The other, maybe, if the chests even exist at all, holds the stories that I have been told. Real or imagined, I've heard them all in voices that I keep in my mind to play them back until the stories themselves sometimes blend with what I know until I'm not quite sure to which chest some things belong.

I know that the name my mothers gave me was Andrew Michael. I know that I was never given a last name, or if I was, it was never told to me. I know that my mothers called me Andrew unless their voices rang out in warning. I remember the sound of each of their voices, harsh with that warning, even if it's been many years since I heard either of them use the tone.

It's been many years since I heard my Mama's voice at all. If the markings on the downstairs' wall are true, and my Mom and I haven't forgotten to tick them off with the changing seasons, then it's been almost four full years since I last heard my Mama's voice…and even then it had been much different than I remember it best inside my mind. For four years, the coming of spring and the appearance of the fresh, light blades of grass outside our home don't remind me of the fact that soon our world will come back to life and we'll be back to work in the fields like it once did. Now the appearance of those grass blades reminds me of the smell of dirt from a fresh grave and the sound my Mom makes when she can no longer pretend that she's too strong to cry.

I know that my Mom is only my _heart_ mother. She never carried me in her womb like my Mama did. We look nothing alike and no one has ever known at first glance that she was my Mom. But we have always told them, right away, so that they wouldn't be confused and believe that my Mom was any less a part of my being a man than my Mama ever was. I know that my Mom was the first to hold me, angry at being wet and cold and born into a world of more cruelty than love. I know that she was the one who first introduced me, here in the outside world, to my Mama because I had only known her from within.

But I remember none of that. I only remember them both, smiling, telling me the story whenever I would complain of taking baths when the air was cold and it felt like my skin would freeze solid the moment I emerged from the water that they'd heated for me…mine was always warm, even if they never bothered to heat it for themselves.

I remember my Mom's voice, when it was stronger and bolder than it is now, when she would smile and me tease, "Andrew, you've always cried over being wet and cold…one of these days, you'll figure out it only makes your face wetter and colder."

I know the man that made me with my Mama was not a good man. I know that he never knew that I was born, and for that I don't remember him. I know that my mothers only ever answered the questions I asked, when I heard others speaking of their fathers, because they never wanted me to live in secrets and they never wanted me to hang my head in shame. I know they told me that, though he made me, I never was my father's son. And I have to believe them because they've never told me anything wrong before—and I can't remember him at all to judge for myself.

I have, as I've grown older—grown old even—looked in the glass of our home, the only one tucked in my mothers' room and just behind the door, and I have traced out the pieces of myself. I try to imagine that the man I am when I take my Mama outside of me is the man my father was, but I don't remember and I really can't imagine what he might have looked like. Because when I look at myself? I only see what is familiar. I see what is mine and I see what is my Mama's, and I find it quite impossible to sort out who the man might have been beyond that. When I look in the glass, though, mostly I find myself searching out the woman that I knew. The woman that I loved. My Mama's eyes are there, looking back at me as I look at myself. I once had her hair, though the color changed for both of us as the years went by. My Mama's smile is there too, though I never really see it and don't make it a practice to smile at myself—but my Mom tells me it's there, and I believe her. I make it a practice to smile at her because she smiles back, touching my face with her hand. And in the four years since my Mama left, she thanks me for the smile because she says it makes her _remember_. And I know she means it makes her remember my Mama.

And I remember my Mama too. And it makes my heart sad because I know that, one day, I'll remember my Mom. Not even the way I remember her now, the way that she was when she was younger and stronger and her eyes were clearer. I'll remember her the way that I remember my Mama now. I'll remember her in the way that we have to remember when memories are all that we have.

I know what love is. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like to give it and receive it. I know what it is because I've seen so much of it in my life. And I remember all the years that my mothers taught me to love, even if their lessons in that weren't as direct and structured as the lessons they gave about how to survive or even, though they both felt it was wasted, how to read and write.

The lessons about love came differently. Those lessons came in how I saw them love me. How I felt the energy between us when they hugged me and held me and told me that they loved me to a point where I couldn't help but believe it. I remember, even when I can't touch either of them, what their arms have always felt like, wrapped around me in a warm hug. I remember, too, the feeling of their soft lips on my forehead just as I closed my eyes to sleep—love and safety, love and comfort, for me were always tangled together somehow in my memory.

And I remember how they loved each other. I remember hearing angry words between them and hiding somewhere, out of sight, to watch them—afraid that they could love me but could no longer love each other. And I remember the feeling of contentment that I would feel when I would see, the angry words done, the embrace between them that said that anger came and anger went, but anger wasn't strong enough to kill love because they wouldn't let it.

I know that I love my wife. And I knew, the moment I became aware of the love, like the funny little songs my Mom used to sing that I couldn't wait to sing along with, that it was love. Because my Mom had always said that love was just like those songs. It got into your head. It filled up your mind. And you could hold it back if you would, but eventually the song would simply break free, sometime when you weren't even thinking about it, and just like those little songs it would be on your lips to surprise even you. And I believed my Mom entirely when I first felt the love I have for my wife.

I remember that my Mama always said that I would be a good man, as long as I remembered to never let go of the good inside me. I remember that she said that I would be a good man, as long as I remembered that the world was good first—that people were good first—and only bad because they chose to be, and I must never choose to be bad, because there were already too many who made such a choice. I remember she said the easiest choices were often the worst ones to make.

And I know I _am_ a good man because my wife tells that I am the best man that she has ever known—and she remembers her father. Even if I don't remember him, because he was gone before I ever knew my Isabelle, I know him from the stories she's told, and I am honored to have been a good enough man that she counts me among the numbers with a man like him.

I remind her, because I want her to remember, no matter the stories that she hears about my father—because people remember him and tell stories about him—that my father made me, but I am not my father's son.

I am my mothers' son. I remember growing up between their strength and their softness. I remember learning from them all that I needed to know about life and love and happiness. All that I know, in some way, has been shaped by these women. And I remember the pain I felt when, carrying my Mama in my arms the way that she'd carried me so many times before, I said goodbye to the one I loved before I was even sure to be a man, before I ever knew anything, especially what love even was—so that I know even better now the importance of loving while you can. I remember them telling me to remember that, as far as back as memory goes, but I didn't know it then.

I know it now. And I make sure to remember it each and every day with the ones that I love. I make sure to be the good man that I can be, and to love the way that only I can, and to share my life and my stories with those around me. Because when I'm gone? If I should leave before they do or before they're ready to see me go? I know that all they'll have are memories and I want their memories to keep them warm when arms are no longer there to reach.

When I hear Isaiah start to fuss from the small room where Isabelle is washing him, just across the hall from my mothers' room, I make my way in there and lean over her enough to see the boy that's complaining about his bath…my hands still stained with soot from having warmed the water just for him.

"There's no need to cry over being wet and cold," I tease the infant. "You'll only make your face wetter and colder."

Isabelle laughs at me, or at him. Sometimes it's one and the same laugh. And then she offers him over to me when she's dried him so that I can dress him and he can settle down, content with the warmth of soft clothing and the comfort of strong arms.

She tells me that she's going to bathe. She tells me I should take him for a walk, and she gestures toward the door of the room with her head before she offers me a soft kiss on the lips and him a soft kiss on the forehead.

And I know that she expects me to take him just across the hall where my Mom is readying herself for sleep and waiting to say goodnight to us both. Even when my Mom is quiet, which she very often is, we remember that she's there and waiting, every night, for two goodnight kisses. One for herself, and for my Mama who never knew the boy who has her eyes.

He'll be like me, I suppose, and the two chests inside his mind will contain many things. Some, perhaps, as years go by he won't be able to sort properly because they are things that are so much a part of him that they might belong to either chest. I'll tell him about my Mama, point to his reflection in the glass and show him that her eyes are there, looking back at him as he looks at himself, and he'll know her even if he can never remember her. And, in time, I'll tell him about my Mom, just as Isabelle will tell him about her parents, but I hope that she'll be here long enough that he might have something of her for the other chest—the one for memories we make for ourselves.

And I'll tell him about myself too. I'll tell him all that I know and all that I remember. And though I hope that he _might _be, I'll tell him that _I'm not my father's son_.


End file.
